>You don't think it is unfair that projects that have basically been xkcd 2347's "a project some random person in Nebraska" don't get a penny, while DHH who gets millions for a bunch of dotfiles, is unfair?

How can we have progress if every shoulder to stand on will cost money? Should we pay every time we walk on the pavement or drive on the road?

Sometimes work is just "for the common good", and sometimes that work is harder than the latter part that actually makes money. It's peculiar, but I don't think it's unfair.

Linus Torvalds will never in his life make a fraction of what Github has made, let alone what RedHat, Ubuntu, Suse etc have made.

But he also doesn't have to pay the GNU project for the use of their compiler. And the GNU project doesn't have to pay him for using his kernel. And RedHat doesn't have to pay either one of them (although they do, voluntarily).

DHH has also made Rails, which is the foundation of several billion dollar enterprises. So he's at least on both ends of the argument.